Refugees are flooding into Turkey as the conflict in Syria enters its fifth year. In the past two weeks, more than 23,000 refugees have fled Syria into Turkey to escape clashes between Syrian Kurdish forces and the Islamic State. The UN Refugee Agency says 70 percent of the people fleeing the conflict are women and children. This latest crush of refugees means Turkey is now hosting more than 1.7 million Syrians who may never return home. 3 million Syrians are living as refugees worldwide.

Keith Watenpaugh is a historian of the Modern Middle East and Associate Professor of Modern Islam, Human Rights & Peace who teaches in the Religious Studies and Human Rights Minor programs. Trained at UCLA, he has lived and conducted research in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Armenia and Iraq. He joins us to explain how the fighting in Syria may be creating the biggest humanitarian crisis of our era.